


Once My Kiddo, Always My Kiddo

by friendlyneighborhoodsecretary



Series: I'm Never Prompt with Prompts [11]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Gen, Love No Amount of Bug Bites Can Change, Post-Spider-Man: Homecoming, Spider-Man: Homecoming Spoilers, post-identity reveal, somewhere between fluff and angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-26
Updated: 2020-01-26
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:20:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 927
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22410901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/friendlyneighborhoodsecretary/pseuds/friendlyneighborhoodsecretary
Summary: Coming to terms with the idea of your kid bouncing around the rooftops in spandex isn't an easy process, but May loves her boy.
Relationships: May Parker (Spider-Man) & Peter Parker
Series: I'm Never Prompt with Prompts [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1558726
Comments: 12
Kudos: 43





	Once My Kiddo, Always My Kiddo

**Author's Note:**

> Written from the prompt: "Just don’t move, and don’t scream, but there’s a… thing on you.”

“Oh! Hold still a minute—” Peter freezes mid-bite of his sandwich when May startles from her spot next to him on the picnic blanket. Her eyes have gone wide and her posture stiff as she drops her own sandwich and leans a few careful inches closer. Her voice is ominously low when she speaks again. “Just…don’t move, and don’t scream, but there’s a…a thing on you.”

That’s…not encouraging. Peter stays still as instructed, but his muscles tense and his senses sharpen, reaching for any clue as to what’s gone wrong or what qualifies as a ‘thing.’ His spider sense isn’t flaring even a little—a rarity in a place as busy and open as the park four blocks down from the apartment—so it can’t be too bad, but then May doesn’t lunge into action for just _anything._

May lifts a hand, bringing it up slow and steady until she’s level with the side of his face. There’s a swift swat and a squish and the faintest sting against his cheekbone, then May is scrubbing her hand clean with a napkin and a few squirts of hand sanitizer as if nothing has happened. She gives Peter’s face an appraising look before she leans in again to gently swipe at a smudge or bug guts or maybe a missed splotch of mustard with a clean corner of the cloth. “Got ‘em!”

“Maaaay,” Peter ducks his chin on reflex, even though the touch sends a spark relief through him that makes the past few days of tension begin to pale. May catches his jaw in one hand and scrubs with the other, a fond little smile tugging at her lips as she works. It’s better than most of the expressions he’s been seeing on that face lately; in the three long days since May caught her first glimpse of Spider-Man, he’s pretty sure he’s seen all but this one. The lightning-rod jolt of realization, the bitter anger of broken trust, the bewildered worry as the story of the powers and what he’s done with them tumbled out—they’ve both torn through every emotion on the spectrum twice over. There had been tears and shouts and desperately frightened embraces in equal measure as they tried to find their footing in the new world May has just joined him in.

And now there was this. A quiet picnic blanket with half of Delmar’s menu spread out on the plastic bags it had come in (May was still learning to gauge what Peter meant by “enhanced metabolism,” but he wasn’t complaining) and a lot of silence that waffles between companionable and awkward. Peter can’t call it the calm after the storm because somehow it doesn’t feel entirely over. He doubts May has quite finished coming to terms with whole superhero thing and he _knows_ she hasn’t spoken to Tony yet, given the way her lips purse and her eyes turn murderous at the mention of his name. Nor have they spent any time hammering out what kind of ground rules and curfews Peter will have to abide by now. All in all, he knows there are more thundercloud days in the offing. It’s inevitable, given the sheer magnitude of the issue at hand.

But for today, at least, they’re both tired of raging and crying and questions, so it’s all been shoved under the rug. Or the picnic blanket, as the case may be.

“Oh, don’t fuss— “May soothes as she pats his face clean. “I just saved you from being Horsefly-Man in addition to your current gig—I think I’ve earned a little leeway here.”

“It was just a _horsefly?!_ I wouldn’t have screamed for a horsefly!”

“You used to,” May points out, smug as she leans back on her palms. The wind stirs her hair off her shoulders and for a moment, all is normal. “You remember that camping trip? With what we _thought_ were hornets, when you hid under my sweater while Ben was trying to fend them off with a tent peg?”

“I was _five_.”

May shrugs, her grin softening from nostalgia to a sharper, steadier sort of love that belongs firmly in the here and now. “Eh. Five, fifteen—I see no difference.”

She reaches out again to smooth a bit of unruly hair off Peter’s forehead, and Peter leans into it. For the longest time, he’s been terrified of this. Of what May would say or how she would feel about knowing what he was now, about the kind of life he was setting himself up to lead—it wasn’t what she would ever want for him, he knows that for certain. There is no safety or security, no vacations or respites from the responsibility he’s chosen to take on, no guarantees that he would come home without bumps and bruises and burns or even in one piece at all—he’s learned all of that the hard way only a few days earlier. He’s never going to have an easy life again. But at least he’s still got May.

For now, that’s enough.

“Once my kiddo, always my kiddo— “she says as her hand slides away to squeeze his shoulder. The grip is fierce, just as it was three days ago. Just as Peter suspects it’s always going to be, despite the momentary upset. The tension he’s held between his shoulder blades begins to bleed away, and Peter grins with the relief of it all. “No amount of horseflies or spiders or assorted other bug bites are ever going to change that, Peter.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! Feel free to drop a comment with any thoughts you have or stop by and say hello on [Tumblr](https://friendlyneighborhoodsecretary.tumblr.com/)!


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